The Expats (6 page)

“Not really.”

“I thought you were going to be able to ease into this job. That you’d have time to help us get settled.”

After three hours’ worth of tours with a real-estate agent, they’d chosen a sprawling apartment in the city’s old center. Rental furniture had arrived within days of their signing the lease, and then they moved from the hotel. Kate started unpacking their ugly giant suitcases and their rented pots and pans, towels and sheets. Their shipping container of belongings was still at least a month away from arriving.

Kate had expected Dexter to join her in the unpacking, but he hadn’t. “You promised that I wouldn’t have to do all this alone, Dexter.”

He threw a noticeable glance at the children. “I
want
to do it with you. But I also need to work.”

“Why right now? Why right away?”

“Because I had to set up a secure office immediately. I needed to
install security systems. I needed to buy devices and hire electricians and carpenters, to check their work. I needed to get all this done immediately, because I also needed to start working on something important that’s happening now.”

“What, exactly? What’s happening?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Can you try?”

He sighed. “Yes, I can try. But please, not tonight. Okay?”

Kate stared at him, not immediately answering, even though they both knew what she was going to answer, and that this silent pause was nothing more than her registration of protest. The longer she paused, the stronger the protest. “Okay,” she said, after a couple seconds. Not too long; not that strident a protest. “But I want you to tell me, at least, who your client is.”

He sighed again. “Katherine, I—”

“I told you: please call me Kate.”

He glowered. “
Kate
. I explained this already. Everyone in this city works in banking. It wouldn’t be good—it would be
bad
—if my client’s competitors knew that they’d hired a security expert from the States to analyze their procedures.”

“Why?”

“It’s a sign of weakness, of insecurity. It’s information that the competition could use against us, to lure clients away, by claiming we’re not secure enough. It would even be bad if people who worked
at
my client knew.”

“Okay, I get that. But why can’t you tell me?”

“Because there’s no upside to it, Kat.
Kate
. These bank names don’t mean anything to you now. But sooner or later, you’ll find that maybe your best friend’s husband works for my client. And she might press you, maybe after a few drinks. ‘C’mon, Kat, you can tell
me
.’ Then you’d be in an uncomfortable position. For what?” He shook his head. “It’s pointless.”

“It’s pointless? To be honest with your spouse?”

“No, sweetheart. It’s pointless to tell you something whose sole meaning will be that you have to keep it a secret. From everyone. That’s a pretty big downside. With no upside.”

Secrets. What did Dexter know about keeping secrets? “So what do I tell people?”

“You tell them the truth: that the terms of my contract prohibit me from disclosing the name of my client.”

“From your
wife
?”

“Nobody’s going to care. This whole economy is based on secrecy.”

“Still,” she said, “it sounds awfully—I don’t know—unmatrimonial.” She marveled at her inability to resist accusing Dexter of her own transgressions.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “Trust me.”

DEXTER DROVE THE rented Volvo around the embassy in the gentle drizzle, circumscribing the compound in a wide and bumpy circle—not really a circle, but an uneven five-sided polygon, a misshaped pentagon—looking for a parking space. They finally found a tight spot under a heavy chestnut tree, the ground beneath littered with leaves and shells. The Brits called these conkers. When they fell, they conked you on the head.

There were a half-dozen people milling around the security hut, waiting for guards to beckon, dispatch their belongings through an X-ray machine, escort them across the garden to a tiny waiting room in the consular building, and wait five, ten, fifteen minutes.

Kate had visited this embassy once before, years ago, and hadn’t needed to wait.

They were summoned. Kate and Dexter entered a tiny room. One wall was dominated by a bulletproof window, with a uniformed man on the other side.

“Good morning,” he said. “Passports please?”

They slipped their passports through a slot. He examined the documents, then his computer. For a minute, maybe two, there was nearly complete silence. Kate could hear a clock ticking on the other side of the glass. The man clicked his mouse, moved his cursor, tapped his keyboard. A couple times, he glanced at Kate and Dexter through the thick glass.

Kate had no reason to be nervous, but she was.

“So how can I help you this morning, Mr. and Mrs. Moore?”

“We moved here,” Dexter said. “We arrived a few weeks ago.”

“I see.” The officer held Dexter’s gaze steady.

“Is there a problem?” Dexter was staring back through the glass, trying to smile, but managing only something that suggested he might need the toilet.

“Does one of you have a job here, Mr. Moore?”

“I do.”

Kate could feel her heartbeat racing. It’s very easy to get very nervous when you’re far from home and someone in uniform is in possession of your passport, on the other side of bulletproof glass.

The official glanced at Kate, met her eye. She hadn’t yet graduated from that phase of her life when as a rule she’d been worried about her own secrets. When it would never occur to her that someone would be suspicious of her husband, instead of herself.

He turned back to Dexter. “Do you have a work permit?”

“Yes,” Dexter said. “Yes I do.”

“We don’t have any record of it. Your work permit. But the Luxembourg government sends us copies. Of work permits newly issued to Americans.”

Dexter folded his arms across his chest, but didn’t say anything.

“When was it issued?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your work permit, Mr. Moore. When was it issued?”

“Um, I’m not sure … It was … recently.”

The men stared at each other through the thick glass.

“There must be some mix-up,” Dexter alleged.

“There must.”

“Do you need a copy of it? My work permit?”

“We do.”

Kate could feel the tension coming off Dexter, an electrical field.

“Then I’ll come back,” Dexter said. “With a copy. Do we both need to return?”

“No, Mr. Moore. Just you.”

“ONE LAST SUBJECT, Katherine.”

She’d been staring at the tabletop, unburdening herself of the proprietary information in her brain. There would be more of this tomorrow, and the day after, and for who knows how long, as someone ran through her files and projects and personnel, revisiting the same details again and again. Making sure she wasn’t lying.

“Is there anything further you want to add now, about your decision five years ago, to leave the field?”

She’d looked up at Adam, a challenge in his eye. She stifled a panic. A vision that she’d been unable to quash the night before, of being escorted to the parking lot, a windowless van supposedly on its way to another office but really to an airfield, a small private jet, accompanied
by two burly guys on a nine-hour flight, deposited at the prison entrance in North Africa where she’d be beaten daily for the next month, until she died of internal bleeding without ever having seen her family again.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

Adam dropped both hands from the table down to his thighs, in exactly the type of pose he’d adopt if he were preparing himself to take physical action.

KATE SHOOK OUT the umbrella, left it on the welcome mat to dry. The message light was blinking on the telephone. First the children needed to be settled in front of the television, after finding appropriate programming in French. Groceries needed to be unpacked. Dinner needed to be started in the kitchen with the German appliances—the dozen options on her oven’s dial included the likes of
Ober-Unterhitze, Intensivbacken
, and
Schnellaufheizen
. She loved the sound of
Intensivbacken
, so she used that setting for everything.

Then she dropped a glass bottle of peach nectar. It shattered on the stone floor, sending not only chunks and shards and slivers of glass everywhere, but also sprays and drips and puddles and pools of thick, sticky juice. This took her fifteen minutes to clean up, on hands and knees, with paper towels and sponges and the cheap upright vacuum cleaner that had come with the rented furnishings.

It was impossible to overstate the extent to which she hated what she was doing.

A half-hour passed before Kate got around to pushing the message button.

“Hi, it’s me.” Dexter. “Sorry, but I’m not going to make it home for dinner tonight.” Again. This was a tiresome new development. “I have a six o’clock call, then an eight. I’ll be home about nine thirty. I hope. Tell the boys I love them.”

Erase.

“Hello, Kate, this is Karen from the AWCL.” What the hell is the AWCL? “Just wanted to touch base, and to let you know that another American couple just arrived in town.” Who cares? “Thought you should meet.”

“YOU’RE SURE?” ADAM had asked.

Kate had struggled to keep her breathing even.

This could be about that thing that happened in Barbados, which hadn’t been entirely authorized. Or it could be about the missing file on the Salvadoran goons, which she hadn’t had anything to do with. Or it could be nothing more complicated than that Joe didn’t trust her, pure and simple.

But most likely it was about Torres. For the past five years, Kate had been convinced that Torres would come back to haunt her. To take revenge upon her.

Or it could be about nothing other than protocol.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.”

Adam stared at her. She summoned the courage to stare back. Chicken, across a conference table. Five seconds, ten. A half-minute of silence.

He could wait forever. This is what he did for a living.

But so could she.